Until recently, it seemed as though the short-tailed albatross would not be able to escape extinction. These endangered seabirds have been threatened first by hunting, and more recently by overfishing in the North Pacific and Bering Seas, and by their less-than-ideal primary breeding ground – a small volcanically active island called Tori-shima, located off the southern coast of Japan.

As you can likely imagine, fishing hooks and volcanic eruptions make for a deadly combination, and albatross populations consequently took a nose dive. Fortunately, the story doesn’t end here. Thanks to the implementation of seabird deterrent devices, called streamers, short-tailed albatross have been making a comeback.

Streamers, often made of long strips of plastic tubing, have been used successfully by fishing fleets to keep birds, such as the short-tailed albatross, at bay. While streamers may look like nothing more than plastic strips waving in the wind to the human eye, the albatross are fooled.

To these seabirds, a row of streamers appears as a barrier. This illusion of a wall deters them from diving down to snag the bait, ultimately saving them from the hooks that have claimed so many of their kin.

Despite the relative close proximity of WWF’s Arctic office in Anchorage, Alaska, and seeming ease of transferring a low-tech solution across the Bering Sea, WWF learned quickly that there were many obstacles that stood between them and implementing streamers abroad, starting when their first shipment of streamers was confiscated by Russian Customs in 2004.

Even once the streamers made it to Kamchatka, WWF faced another hurdle: How can fisherman be convinced to use them?

WWF and other conservationists were undoubtedly in support of streamers for what they accomplished for seabird populations, but the captains and crews needed some convincing that rigging their fleets with streamers was worth the hassle. Through a comparative study of boats using streamers versus boats without them, experts from WWF found that the fleet not using streamers lost approximately $840,000 annually.

So how is it that streamers save so much money? As previously demonstrated by the Alaskan fleet, when streamers are present, seabirds are less likely to dive for the bait. As a result, not only are seabirds spared from the fatal hooks, but the bait remains available for fish, making a greater harvest possible. Fishermen know well that more fish means more money, so the fleets of Kamchatka concluded that installing streamers and potentially saving that $840,000 was worth the extra elbow grease.

Seabirds stay on the outside of the streamer lines, safe from the baited hooks on the longline. (Photograph courtesy Dr. Yuri Artukhin/WWF)

Making Progress

The streamers effort in Kamchatka has evolved into a sustainable conservation project. Today, at least one Kamchatka fishing company manufactures its own streamers and makes custom-fit improvements, such as adding steel davits for easier deployment of streamers off the back of the boat.

Most importantly, thanks in part to the commitment of WWF and the longline vessels now sporting streamers, short-tailed albatross numbers are on the rise around the Kamchatka Peninsula. In 2008, WWF researchers monitoring seabird bycatch spotted an average of only two albatross a day.

By 2013, these researchers witnessed an average of 13 a day, even spotting as many as 33. These counts suggest an over 500 percent increase in albatross seen in this area in just five years.

The Japanese Bird Migration Research Center has also confirmed the growth in this population, adding that banded short-tailed albatross from both Tori-shima and from Muko-jima Island – a new man-made, translocated colony – have been seen feeding in waters around Kamchatka in the Bering Sea.

Best of all, according to records kept by Russian fishery observers during the 2013 season, zero short-tailed albatross were reported as bycatch. Here’s to more continued success of streamers and keeping this streak alive in 2014 and the years to come.

WWF-U.S. received a grant for this work from the Lindblad-National Geographic Fund for Conservation, Research and Exploration in 2013. The Fund supports efforts to restore the health and productivity of the ocean, and to positively impact natural and human communities.

“The analyses of the impact of trawl mortality on the Torishima short-tailed albatross population suggests that exceeding the current expected incidental take in the Alaskan groundfish trawl fishery, two in any 5-year period, by as much as a factor of 10 would have little impact on when the proposed recovery goals for the species are achieved.”

“Achieving these goals is impeded only slightly if albatross are bycaught each year and is still attainable even with an unrealistically high trawl mortality of 50 albatross killed annually. The population model developed here shows that survival rates from all sources of mortality other than that caused by fisheries must be very high to allow for the observed increases in albatross numbers. These high survival rates, in turn, allow limited trawl mortality to have little influence on the population trajectory.”

Post a comment

Ocean Views brings new and experienced voices together to discuss the threats facing our ocean and to celebrate successes. We strive to raise awareness worldwide to the benefits of restoring fisheries and creating marine reserves. We inspire people to take better care of the oceans and leave a legacy of pristine seas to future generations.

The blog is hosted by Enric Sala, Explorer-in-Residence with National Geographic.

Opinions expressed are those of the blogger and/or the blogger's organization, and not necessarily those of the National Geographic Society. Bloggers and commenters are required to observe National Geographic's community rules.

The photograph above, by David Wrobel, SeaPics, is from the most popular ocean gallery on the National Geographic website: Deep-Sea Creatures

Pristine Seas

Pristine Seas is an exploration, research, and media project to find, survey, and help protect the last wild places in the ocean. These pristine places are unknown by all but long-distance fishing fleets, which have started to encroach on them. It is essential that we let the world know that these places exist, that they are threatened, and that they deserve to be protected.

Greatest Threat to Mediterranean Fish?
Enric Sala reveals what is even more dangerous than pollution, invasive species, or climate change, and warns that unless the situation is addressed we’re just going to reduce the Mediterranean Sea to a soup of microbes and jellyfish. There is a fix to this threat.

Acid Seas

The carbon dioxide we pump into the air is seeping into the oceans and slowly acidifying them. One hundred years from now, will oysters, mussels, and coral reefs survive? Read the National Geographic Feature

Southern Line Islands

The waters around the southern Line Islands in the Pacific Ocean are home to some of the healthiest coral reefs in the world. The government of Kiribati recently declared a 12-nautical-mile fishing exclusion zone around each of the five islands, thanks in part to the efforts of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas initiative and Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala, who led a research expedition there in 2009. “Diving at the southern Line Islands reveals what the seas once were, in all their richness and wonder,” says Sala. “Coming here has reset our entire understanding of what’s natural, and has given us a new baseline against which to measure healthy and unhealthy reefs everywhere.”